Community sentences 'too soft' to stop crime

Three out of five people think community sentences are "weak and undemanding", as it emerged offenders are working in charity shops or serving tea in lunch clubs.

The Policy Exchange think tank said in a report that even the toughest type of order, the community payback scheme, was a soft option.

It called for a radical overhaul to put payback and punishment at the heart of community sentences as Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke prepares to outline plans that could result in less jail time and more community orders for offenders.

The report said just half of community orders were completed last year. One in three were not completed satisfactorily with one in 10 terminated early because of a reconviction.

But probation chiefs defended community sentences saying they were the "most successful order available to the courts in terms of reducing re-offending".

The report found half of people were against using more community sentences in their current form and three in four thought they should be more focused on payback to the community and punishment.

Victims' commissioner Louise Casey questioned whether making costumes for the Notting Hill Carnival, working in a charity shop or making tea for the elderly was a sufficient punishment.

"To have the confidence of those who pass sentence, the public, and of victims in particular, this must change," she said.

Robert Kaye, author of the report Fitting the Crime: Reforming Community Sentences, said community sentences were "fundamentally flawed, poorly administered and confused in their purpose".

The survey of more than 2,000 people also found just one in 20 thought community sentences were "good for rehabilitation".

But Roz Brown, of the Probation Chiefs Association, defended the schemes.

Sge said: "Community Payback is the most successful order available to the courts in terms of reducing re-offending, with 75 per cent of offenders not offending again within the next two years. The equivalent figure for a short prison sentence is 29 per cent."

She added that most community sentences involved "unpaid work by offenders that communities have asked for and recognise as benefiting them", as well as helping offenders get a job.

In 2009/10 probation trusts in England and Wales supervised nearly nine million hours of unpaid work, carried out by 67,000 offenders - providing £50 million worth of work at the minimum wage, she said.

The report called for the creation of intensive, more visible and more closely supervised "work orders", with an emphasis on physical labour conducted outside and in groups.

The ban on work schemes taking place on private property, such as roads and railway stations, should also be lifted, it said.

Probation officers should also be given new powers to vary the length of work orders and to impose extra punishments on those who break the rules. Other sanctions should include the loss of benefits and fines.

The Policy Exchange also said community sentences were "now applied to more hardened offenders with longer criminal records and in response to more serious offences".

The proportion of violent offences resulting in a community or suspended sentence rose from 40 per cent to 57 per cent over the past decade.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: "We are looking at how private and voluntary sector providers can be involved in running community sentences to make them more rigorous, ensure proper compliance, and deliver better value for the taxpayer."

A consultation on any proposed reforms will happen "later in the year", he added.